Leading companies in the reach of downloadable media (podcasting, webisodes etc.) have adopted the guidelines of the ADM (Association for Downloadable Media), an industry association. These adopted guidelines do include advertising standards in regard to advertising formats and measurement standards in regard to the unique measurement of reaches. Participating companies e.g. are Wizzard Media, a podcasting service with billions of downloads, or Kiptronic, a specialized advertising network.

The importance of the guidelines is caused by some particular problems like decentralized consumption. For instance podcasts and webisodes may be received and consumed by completely different means like abonnements within browser or special software like iTunes and at completely different and distributed places like podcasting directories and video sharing portals with own website players.

For now the ADM has released two standards, the Advertisement Unit Standards and the Download Measurement Guidelines.

The adoption is of importance to the industry because of two reasons. At first it is the fact, that downloadable media is a growth market. The second reason is the most fragmented market, which consists of most different participants and media formats. Exemplarily there are advertising formats like spoken sponsoring messages and the usage of various terms. For the further coordination and standardization especially in the reach of the definition of terms the ADM is providing a wiki. Market participants are welcome to collaborate. Further information for participation is available at the standards page, the wiki with current information about these issues is located at downloadablemedia.pbwiki.com.

Blog post of the ADM about the adoption of the standards by market participants:
ADM Members Champion Standards and Guidelines